Soon Antony Sar and I became good friends. One day he invited me to his house and I went there the next day itself. Seeing me he invited me to his study (rather work shop). But I couldn't go in as the drawing room floor was littered with radios, TV's, VCR's and anything that had something to do with electronics. Seeing the predicament I was in, he waved his hands signaling me to come in. Finally with some acrobatics I managed to get in without hurting any of those 'electronic creatures'. Watching this Chemistry professor being so at ease with electronics, my respect for him multiplied and I decided to ask him a doubt that was haunting me since my pre-degree days. Non-mathematics people may kindly excuse as this Chemistry professor now working in electronics is about to delve into some mathematics. The following was my doubt. In Physics there is a superposition principle which states that when a medium is simultaneously disturbed by two or more than two waves there will be a resultant wave which is the algebraic sum of the individual waves. Now, here is my doubt. In an orchestra there are various musical instruments and human voice each producing its own wave and the wave that falls on your ear drum is that single resultant wave. Yet, you can hear each sound distinctly. That is, you can differentiate between the sounds produced by ,say, the guitar and the violin. How is this possible? This was my doubt. He just smiled and told me, "it's all because our brain has the capacity to Fourier Analyse". I felt spell bound by the answer. Genesis 1-3,and God said "let there be light". It was light all over with this Fourier Analysis explanation. This incident not just cleared a decade old doubt but completely changed my approach to teaching Physics and Mathematics. I decided to not leave students with such doubts that will keep them disturbing. But this was a task easier said that done. After all, the joy of learning Physics lies in understanding the meaning of the equations. Thank you Antony Sar.
